St. George petitioners trying to gain steam

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BATON ROUGE - Petition organizers for the proposed city of St. George collected hundreds of signatures Saturday.

The petition started as a way for the unincorporated area of East Baton Rouge Parish to gain an independent school district.

"But now we've learned that we can run a very efficient city and have a great city that can work hand in hand with Baton Rouge, with Central, with Zachary and with Baker to build a great East Baton Rouge Parish area," said petition chairman Norman Browning.

The group needs to collect 18,000 signatures for the proposed city to be put to a vote. Organizers we spoke with today say they're aiming for 20,000 signatures to have some cushion. Browning says they've collected around 10,000 signatures so far and have been hovering around that figure for some time.

"You're going to get a lot of signatures early and then it's going to plateau off. We're at that stage right now," said Browning. "There are a number of people that tell us that they want to sign and they're out to sign. We know they're people who want this and we're going to find these people and get them signed up."